| Releases
& Statements
For Release: Tuesday,
February 13, 2007
Contact: Frank Sobrino, Press Secretary
O: (212) 669-4193
Statement
by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum
for City Council Education Committee Hearing
Thank you Chairman Jackson for holding
this important hearing.
Yesterday I proposed legislation that
would create a School Bus Bill of Rights. This legislation would
bar the Department of Education from ever again making major changes
to school bus routes in the middle of the school year.
That’s because, for more than
two weeks, thousands of parents across the city have struggled
to find ways to get their children to and from school safely on
the heels of the Department of Education’s ill-conceived
plan to reorganize school bus routes in the middle of winter.
The plan’s many flaws, the hardships
for parents, and dangers to children have been well documented
in news reports, derided in cartoons and lambasted in editorials.
Rightfully so.
In response to the outrage, the Mayor
suggested that parents call 3-1-1, where, the Mayor said, quote,
“We’ll adjudicate the problem and make sure you get
the service IF YOU DESERVE IT.”
The part about, “if you deserve
it,” struck me as a highly subjective standard. Who’s
deciding whether a child “deserves” bus service?
Who, for example, decided it was safe
for a five-year-old and his seven-year-old brother, to cross Northern
Boulevard at 193rd Street in Queens?
The boys’ mother, who has to
take her four-year-old special needs child to school in the morning,
has been denied a hazard variance. The variance would allow her
five- and seven-year-olds to take the same bus they had been riding
before the new plan went into effect.
The reason for the denial: The DOE
says it’s a safe crosswalk for the children to navigate.
Never mind the heavy volume of traffic across six lanes during
the morning rush. Never mind that we’re talking about a
kindergartner and a second-grader.
Whoever decided these children don’t
“deserve” bus service was not aware of the traffic
accident that occurred at this intersection already this year,
or that 12 occurred there last year.
Whoever decided to deny these children
bus service seemed more concerned with the fact that these young
children live 53 feet too close to their school.
In the end, what’s most troubling
about this whole fiasco is that parents’ lives have been
turned upside down, and children’s safety put in jeopardy,
all to save a little money.
Say about me what you will Mr. Mayor,
but I think that this really a sign of poor management, and it
is a disgrace.
And at the end of the day, how much,
in fact, will this reorganization save? We were first told it
would be $20 million. However, recently published reports have
variously cited a savings of anywhere from $12 million to $5.6
million. The consulting firm that created this mess, Alvarez &
Marsal, has since pocketed $15.8 million for its work.
Worse yet, the school bus debacle
may be the first in a series of similarly ill-conceived reforms,
because the DOE continues to solicit advice from this firm.
The Department’s contract with
Alvarez and Marsal gives the company extensive decision-making
power in a number of areas, including student-based budgeting,
special education, school facilities and “resource realignment,”
whatever that means.
The company’s responsibility
for the school bus fiasco warrants termination of its contract,
not an opportunity to make a bigger mess of things.
Fire Alvarez & Marsal. Scrap the
school bus plan. Go back to the drawing board.
Thank you.
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